Category: Nature of Code

For this week’s assignment, I created a bunch of Fairy Dust from Spirited Away 😀

They will be very chill and sing Doraemon Theme song to you as long as you don’t press the mouse!

My original idea was to create a group of them in the shape of a rectangle that can move with the mouse. But later,  I found out that if I wanted them to be in their positions and form a rectangle, they cannot follow the mouse position. So I modified the function and added forces to make them stay where they were.

They would get anxious when the mouse is being pressed. To achieve this effect, I used mousePressed and mouseReleased functions to modify the range that the distance between the original position and the current position is mapped to.

Keep the sound on and enjoy your interaction with the Fairy Dust!

My link to Assignment 10.

This week, we are asked to do exploration about autonomous agents. What I made is a game similar to Snake where the user can manipulate the snake by mouse. When it touches fruits, the length of it will increase, but when it touches the obstacles in another color, the length of it will decrease. There is recording of its length on the left top corner, and when it reaches 30 or is less than 2, the game will end. The only thing that is different form the typical game is that the snake is composed of several circles which are all autonomous agents. They follow each other one by one so that the snake is more flexible and interesting. Of course, the current version of the game is not too difficult because I didn’t make the boundaries the obstacle as well. I think there can be more elements to add to the game to make it more challenging.

Here is my short video demo and the endpoint of the game in the video was set to 10:

week10

Date: 04-23-2019

Click here to visit on p5 Web Editor

To interact, simply click anywhere on the canvas to create a ball object, which will attract and be attracted to all the existing ball objects. Nonetheless, the attraction between them does not simply pull one ball towards another; when their distance decreases to a certain point, the attraction changes to repulsion to prevent them from getting any closer, so that both balls remain at a balanced position. When there are more than two balls, they shake and move constantly until they reach the balanced point. Every time a new object is added, it takes the objects some time to find that new balanced point.

I added sine value in the movement, giving a constant shrinking and growing effect to the bigger circular shape that all the ball objects form.

Week 10 Assignment

Link to Assignment

Concept

For this project, I worked with what we learned about creating autonomous agents and used the vehicles class that we made in class to configure a basic game. The goal of the game is to heard all of the triangles into the boundaries of the circle.

Mechanics

The mechanics are rather simple. Essentially, the triangles repel the mouse when it is within a certain distance of them. However, they are attracted to the center of the on-screen circle when within a certain distance. Thus, while the triangles start with their own random acceleration, the user can use the mouse to direct their movement and coax them into the circle.

Improvements

Some things that I’d like to further examine with this project is exchanging the shapes for simple images (such as sheep or other animals that the user is required to heard together). Additionally, I’d like to add collision detection between the circle and the vehicle objects so there is somehow an on-screen reaction when a triangle is successfully captured.

Additionally, to make it feel more like a game, I could add an on-screen progress counter to countdown how many objects are left to be captured. Or, I could have the screen constantly producing objects and the user wins based on how many they successfully capture within a certain amount of time. 

Overall, however, I like how the vehicles maneuver the screen as if they are alive to some extent. It gives the feel of herding animals on a farm or something.